Rachel Gibson: Lola Carlyle Reveals All

The sailboat sliced through the calm waters, a blur to Max, and all too clearly reminding him of his weakened position. He couldn’t see straight. At the moment, his vision was better in the dark than the light, which had just about as many advantages as disadvantages. He didn’t need a doctor to tell him his ribs were cracked, and he was sure he’d be pissing blood for at least a week. Worse, Cosella’s men had taken all of his toys- his weapons and his communications. They’d even taken his watch. He had nothing to fight back with, and if they found him, he was a sitting duck. Worse than a sitting duck. His bad luck had cursed him with a soft civilian woman and her irritating mutt. He shook his leg and the little yap-per slid across the wooden floor.

“Let me go and I’ll sit down like you said.”

He didn’t believe her. He didn’t believe she wouldn’t try something, and in his present state, he wouldn’t even see it coming. He’d lived through too much already tonight to let her finish the job. He narrowed his gaze and his double vision slid into one image. The stern light of the sailboat slid past without incident, and to his vast relief his double vision did not return.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m one of the good guys.”

“Right,” she said, but she didn’t sound convinced. More like she was trying to pacify him.

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“Good guys don’t steal boats and kidnap women.”

She had a point, but she was just plain wrong. Sometimes the line between the good guys and the bad guys was as hazy as his sight. “I didn’t steal this vessel, I’m commandeering it. And I’m not kidnapping you.”

“Then take me back.”

“No.” Max had been trained by the best the military had to offer. Excluding tonight’s fiasco, he could shoot and loot better than most. Scale just about any installation, get what he needed, and be out by dinner, but he knew from experience that one hysterical woman could make a solid situation as unstable as hell. “I am not going to hurt you. I just need to put some distance between me and Nassau.”

“Who are you?”

He thought about giving her a fictitious name, but since she would probably find it out when she tried to have him arrested for kidnapping, he told her the truth. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Max Zamora,” he answered, but he didn’t give her the whole truth. He left out that he was retired from the military and that he currently worked for a part of the government that didn’t exist on paper.

“Let go of me,” she demanded, and for the first time Max looked downward into the blurred image of his hands wrapped around her wrists. The backs of his fingers and knuckles pressed into the soft pillows of her breasts, and suddenly he felt every inch of her slim back crushed into his chest. Her rounded behind was shoved into his groin, and hunger mixed with the ache riding his ribs and thumping his skull. He was equally disgusted and surprised that he could feel anything beyond pain. Awareness of her spread across his skin, and he pushed it back, tamped it down, and forced it into the dark recesses where he buried all weakness.

“Are you going to take another swing at me?” he asked.

“No.”

He released her and she flew out of his grasp as if her clothes were on fire. Through the dark shadows of the cabin, he watched her disappear into the corner, then he turned to the controls once again.

“Come here, Baby.”

He looked over his shoulder at her, sure he hadn’t heard her right. “What?”

She scooped up her dog. “Did he hurt you, Baby Doll?”

“Jeesuz,” he groaned as if he’d stepped in something foul. She’d named her dog Baby Doll. No wonder it was such a nasty little pain in the ass. He returned his attention to the GPS and pressed the switch. The screen illuminated, a gray blur of lines and fuzzy numbers. He squinted and brought the screen a bit more into focus. On the port side of the screen, he could just make out the approaching lines of Andros Island and the chain of Berry Islands off his starboard side. He couldn’t see well enough to read the increments of longitude and latitude, but he figured as long as he headed northwest for another hour before turning due west, he would land along the coast of Florida by morning.

“If you’re really a lieutenant, then show me your identification.”

Even if every piece of identification hadn’t been taken from him when he’d been captured, it wouldn’t have told her anything anyway. He’d entered Nassau under the name of Eduardo Rodriguez, and everything from his passport and driver’s license to his pocket litter had been falsified.

“Take a seat, lady. This will all be over before you know it,” he said, because there was nothing more he could tell her. Nothing she would believe anyway. The American public was better off not knowing about men like Max. Men who operated in the shadows. Men who performed untraceable missions for the U.S. government and were paid with untraceable money. Men who answered nonexistent calls from nonexistent phones in a nonexistent office in the Pentagon. Men who gathered intelligence, disrupted terrorist activity, and took out bad guys while allowing the government its deniability.

“Where are we going?”

“West,” he answered, figuring that was all the information she needed.

“Exactly where west?”

He didn’t need to see her to know by the tone of her voice that she was the kind of woman who expected to be in charge. A real ball-buster. Under the best of circumstances, Max didn’t let anyone bust his balls, and this wasn’t the best of circumstances. And he’d be damned if he’d allow some woman to screw up his night even more than it had already been screwed.

“Exactly where I decide.”

“I deserve to know where I’m being taken.”

Normally, he didn’t enjoy intimidating women, but just because he didn’t enjoy it didn’t mean it bothered him, either. He backed the engine off to a nice cruising speed of about twenty knots, punched up the cruise control, and stalked to where she stood with her dog, a shadowy figure in a dark corner of the bridge.

Light from the full moon slipped through the windshield and lit up the top of her shoulder and throat. She must have gotten a glimpse of his face, because she sucked in her breath and sank back even farther into the corner. Good. Let her be afraid of him.

“Listen real close,” he began, towering over her and placing his hands on his hips. “I can make things easy for you, or I can make them real hard. You can sit back and enjoy the ride, or you can fight me. If you choose to fight me, I guaran-goddamn-ty you won’t win. Now, what’s it gonna be?”

She didn’t say a word, but her dog propelled itself from her arms and sank its teeth into his shoulder like a rabid bat.

“Shit!” Max swore, and grabbed the mutt.

“Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt Baby!”

Hurt him? Max was going stomp it into a grease spot. He pulled and the fabric of his shirt ripped. The snarling beast came off in his hands and he dropped him to the floor. The dog yelped and scampered away.

“You bastard!” she yelled. “You hurt my dog.” Only after her fist connected with the side of his head did he realize she’d blindsided him. His ears rang, his vision blurred a little more, and he called her some very choice names.

She took another swing, but he was ready for her and grabbed her wrist in midaim. He swept her feet out from beneath her and she went down, hitting the deck hard. Max was through playing nice. He flipped her onto her stomach and planted his knee in her back. She flailed and fought and called him a few pathetic names of her own.

“Get off me!”

Get off her? Not likely. He was going to gag her, tie her up, and dump her overboard. Sayonara , sweetheart. Dim light from the GPS spread across the floor and reached her bare feet and calves. She kicked, and he grasped two fistfuls of her skirt and ripped a long piece from the bottom.